Anthologies

British Literature 1640-1789

An Anthology

Edited by Robert DeMaria Jr

Oxford: Blackwell, 1996

Lists of Authors
Introduction
Editorial Principles
Acknowledgements

Ballads and Newsbooks from the Civil War (1640-1646)

The World is Turned Upside Down (1646)

The King's Last farewell to the World, Or The Dead King's Living Meditations, at the approach of Death denounced against Him (1649)

The Royal Health to the Rising Sun (1649)

from A Perfect Diurnal of Some Passages in Parliament (1649)

Number 288 29 January - 5 February 1649

from Mercurius Pragmaticus (1649)

Number 43 30 January - 6 February 1649

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

from Leviathan (1651)

Chapter XIII, Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery

Robert Filmer (d. 1653)

from Patriarcha or the Natural Power of Kings Asserted (1680)

V Kings are either Fathers of their People, or Heirs of such Fathers, or the Usurpers of the Rights of such Fathers

VI Of the Escheating of Kingdoms

VII Of the Agreement of Paternal and Regal Power

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

from Hesperides (1648)

The Argument of His Book

To Daffodils

The Night-piece, to Julia

The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home

Upon Julia's Clothes

When he would have his verses read

Delight in Disorder

To the Virgins, to make much of Time

His Return to London

The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad

The Pillar of Fame

Charles I (1600-1649) and John Gauden (1605-1662)

from Eikon Basilike (1649)

Upon the Calling in of the Scots, and their Coming

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

from Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or, Enquiries into Very Many Received Tenets, and Commonly Presumed Truths (1646)

To the Reader

John Milton (1608-1674)

from The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; Restored to the Good of Both Sexes, From the bondage of Canon Law, and other mistakes, to Christian freedom, guided by the Rule of Charity. Wherein also many places of Scripture, have recovered their long-lost meaning. Seasonable to be now thought on in the Reformation intended (1643)

Book I The Preface

from Chapter I

from Chapter VI

from Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England (1644)

from Eikonoklastes (1649)

Chapter 13 Upon the Calling in of the Scots and their Coming

from Poems (1673)

Sonnet 18 On the Late Massacre in Piemont (1655)

Sonnet 19 "When I Consider how My Light is Spent" (1652)

Sonnet 16 (to the Lord General Cromwell) (1652)

Paradise Lost (1667)

The Verse

Book I

Book II

Book III

Book IV

Book V

Book VI

Book VII

Book VIII

Book IX

Book X

Book XI

Book XII

Richard Crashaw (1613?-1649)

from Steps to the Temple (1646)

A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the Admirable Saint Teresa

Margaret Fell Fox (1614-1702)

from Women's Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666)

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)

from Poems (1656)

Ode to Wit

To Mr Hobbes

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)

from Lucasta (1649)

Song To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Song To Amarantha, That she would dishevel her hair

To Althea, From Prison Song.

Abiezer Coppe (1619-1672)

from A Fiery Flying Roll: A Word from the Lord to all the Great Ones of the Earth, whom this may concern: Being the last Warning Piece at the dreadful day of Judgement For now the Lord is come (1650)

Anna Trapnel (1620?-1660?)

from The Cry of a Stone: or a Relation of Something spoken in Whitehall (1654)

Lucy Apsley Hutchinson (1620-1687)

from Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (1664)

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

from Miscellaneous Poems (1681)

Bermudas (1653?)

The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun (1651-2?)

The Mower to the Glo-worms (1651-2?)

An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)

The Garden (1651-2?)

On a Drop of Dew (1651-2?)

To his Coy Mistress (c. 1645)

Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)

from Silex Scintillans (1655)

"They are all gone into the world of light!"

The Night

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-73)

from Poems and Fancies (1653)

A Dialogue betwixt Learning, and Ignorance

Dorothy Osborne Temple (1627-1695)

from Letters to William Temple

Letter 3 8 January 1653

Letter 28 2 July 1653

Letter 58 11 February 1654

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

from Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666):

Katherine Philips (1631-1664)

from Poems by the most deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda (1667)

Friendship's Mystery, To my dearest Lucasia

Epitaph on Her Son H. P. at St. Syths's Church where her body also lies Interred

The Virgin

Upon the graving of her Name upon a Tree in Barnelmes Walks

To Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, on her commanding me to send her some things I had written

To the Truly Competent Judge of Honour, Lucasia, upon a scandalous Libel made by J. J.

To Mrs Wogan, my Honoured Friend, on the Death of her Husband

Friendship in Emblem, or the Seal. To my dearest Lucasia

Orinda to Lucasia.

Parting with Lucasia, A Song

To Antenor,on a Paper of mine which J. J. threatens to publish to prejudice him

John Dryden (1631-1700)

To My Honoured Friend, Dr Charleton on his learned and useful Works; and more particularly this of Stone-Henge, by him Restored to the true Founders (1663)

Mac Flecknoe (1676?)

To the Memory of Mr Oldham

To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew (1686) An Ode

A Song for St. Cecilias Day (1687)

from Fables Ancient and Modern (1700)

Pygmalion and the Statue

John Locke (1632-1704)

from An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government (1690)

from Chapter 1

from Chapter 2 Of the State of Nature

from Chapter 4 Of Slavery

from Chapter 5 Of Property

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)

from Diary

July 1665

August 1665

Thomas Sprat (1635-1713)

from The History of the Royal Society (1667)

from Part Two, Section XX Their Manner of Discourse

Aphra Behn (1640-1689)

from Poems upon Several Occasions

A Farewell to Celladon, On his Going into Ireland

On a Copy of Verses made in a Dream, and sent to me in a Morning before I was Awake

To my Lady Morland at Tunbridge

The Disappointment

On a Locket of Hair Wove in a True-Love's Knot, Given Me by Sir R. O.

An Ode to Love

A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation

From Lycidus: or the Lover in Fashion (1688)

To the fair Clarinda, who made Love to me, Imagined More than Woman

From Miscellany, Being a Collection of Poems by Several hands (1685)

Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died before

Ovid to Julia: A Letter

Oroonoko: or the Royal Slave. A True History (1688)

John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)

From Poems on Several Occasions (1680?)

The Imperfect Enjoyment

A Satyr against Reason and Mankind

The Disabled Debauchee

Lampoon [On the Women about Town]

Signior Dildo

A Satyr on Charles II

A Letter from Artemiza in the Town to Chloe in the Country

Archbishop William King (1650-1729)

from Taxation of Ireland, A.D. 1716

Jane Barker (1652-c. 1727)

from Poetical Recreations: Consisting of Original Poems, Songs, Odes etc. with Several New Translations (1688)

To My Young Lover on His Vow

Absence for a Time

Parting with------

Lady Mary Chudleigh (1656-1710)

from The Ladies' Defence: or, The Bride-Woman's Counsellor Answered: A Poem in a Dialogue between Sir John Brute, Sir William Loveall, Melissa and a Parson (1701)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1703)

To the Ladies

Friendship

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

from An Essay upon Projects (1698)

An Academy for Women

from The True-Born Englishman: A Satire(1700)

Part 1

from Part 2

The Shortest Way with the Dissenters: Or Proposals for the Establishment of the Church (1702)

A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal, The next Day after Her Death: To One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury. The 8th of September, 1705 (1706)

from The London Gazette Monday 11 January to Thursday 14 January 1702

Anne Killigrew (1660-85)

from Poems (1686)

Upon the saying my Verses were made by another

Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)

from Miscellany Poems (1713)

The Introduction

Life's Progress

Adam Posed

The Petition for an Absolute Retreat

To the Nightingale

Poem for the Birth-day of the Right Honourable the Lady Catharine Tufton

The Atheist and the Acorn

The Unequal Fetters

The Answer (to Pope's Impromptu)

The Spleen: A Pindaric Poem (1701: revised 1713)

Delariviere Manley (1663-1724)

from Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of Both Sexes. From The New Atlantis, an Island in the Mediterranean (1709)

Thomas Brown (1663-1704)

from The Letters from the Dead to the Living (1702)

From worthy Mrs Behn the Poetess, to the famous Virgin Actress.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1718)

To the Honourable Charles Montagu, Esq

The Lady's Looking-Glass

The Chameleon

For my Own Tomb-stone

[Jinny the Just]

Mary Astell (1668-1731)

from A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest. By a Lover of Her Sex (1694)

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

A Tale of a Tub Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind (1704)

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public (1729)

A Description of the Morning (1709)

A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed (1734)

A Description of a City Shower (1710)

Stella's Birth-day (13 March 1719)

Sarah Fyge Egerton (1670?-1723)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1703)

The Power of Love

The Emulation

George Cheyne (1671-1743)

from The English Malady: or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds, as Spleen, Vapours, Lowness of Spirits, Hypochondriacal Distempers &c. (1733)

Chapter 6: Of the frequency of Nervous Disorders in later years beyond what they have been observed in former Times

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Richard Steele (1672-1729)

from The Spectator

from Number 11 Tuesday, March 13, 1711 [Inkle and Yarico]

from Number 267 Saturday, January 5, 1712 [The Plot of Paradise Lost]

from Number 279 Saturday, January 19, 1712 [The Sentiments and Language of Paradise Lost]

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

from The Songs in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1715)

Against Quarrelling and Fighting

The Sluggard

Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674-1737)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1696)

A Farewell to Love

The Rapture

Mary Molesworth Monck (c. 1677?-1715)

from Marinda, Poems and Translations upon Several Occasions (1716)

On the Invention of Letters

On a Romantic Lady

On Marinda's Toilette

from Moccoli

Addressed to Colonel Richard Molesworth

from Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755)

Verses Written on her Death-bed at Bath to her Husband in London

John Gay (1685-1732)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1720)

from Trivia: or the Art of Walking the Streets of London

Book III: Of Walking The Streets By Night

The Toilette; A Town Ecologue; Lydia

from Fables (1727)

The Turkey and the Ant

The Man and the Flea

Allan Ramsay (1686-1758)

from The Poems of Allan Ramsay (1800)

Polwart on the Green (1721)

Give Me a Lass with a Lump of Land (1721)

Ephraim Chambers (c. 1680-1740)

from Some Considerations Offered to the Public, preparatory to a second Edition of the Cyclopedia: or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (c. 1738)

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

The Rape of the Lock: An Heroi-comical Poem (1714)

from The Dunciad Variorum (1729)

Martin Scriblerus, of the Poem

Dunciados Periocha: or, Arguments to the Books

Book the First

Of the Characters of Women: An Epistle to a Lady (1735)

from The New Dunciad: as it was Found in the Year 1741

To the Reader

The Argument

Book the Fourth

from Letters

To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1 September 1718)

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)

from Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, on the Most Important Occasions, Directing not only the Requisite Style and Forms to be Observed in Writing Familiar Letters; but How to Think and Act Justly and Prudently, in the Common Concerns of Human Life (1741)

Letter 58 To a Friend, on Occasion of his not answering his Letter

Letter 59 In Answer to the preceding

Letter 153 From a Young Lady in Town to her Aunt in the Country, Describing Bethlehem Hospital

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)

from Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M__y W__y M__u: Written, during her travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, To Persons of Distinction, Men of Letters, &c. in different Parts of Europe. Which Contain, Among other Curious Relations, Accounts of the Policy and Manners of the Turks; Drawn from Sources that have been inaccessible to other Travellers

To the Lady X-----

To the Lady-----

[To Lady Mar]

To Mr. [Alexander] Pope

The Lover (1721-5)

The Reasons that Induced Dr S[wift] to Write a Poem called the Lady's Dressing Room (1732-4)

To the Memory of Mr. Congreve (1729)

[A Summary of Lord Lyttleton's advice to a Lady] (1731-3)

Mary Barber (1690-1757)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1734)

The Conclusion of a Letter to the Rev. Mr. C--

A Letter for my Son to one of his School-fellows, Son to Henry Rose, Esq.

Eliza Fowler Haywood (1693-1756)

Fantomina: Or, Love in a Maze (1724)

Trials at the Old Bailey (1722-1727)

from Select Trials at the Sessions House in the Old Bailey (1742)

H---- J----, for a Rape, 1722

Gabriel Lawrence, for Sodomy, April, 1726

Mary Picart, alias Gandon, for Bigamy, June, 1725

Richard Savage, James Gregory, and William Merchant, for Murder, Thursday December 7, 1727

James Thomson (1700-1748)

Winter: A Poem (1726)

Stephen Duck (1705-1756)

from Poems on Several Subjects (1730)

from The Thresher's Labour

Henry Fielding (1705-1754)

From Miscellanies (1743)

from An Essay on Conversation

Mary Jones (d. 1778)

from Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1750)

Soliloquy, on an Empty Purse

After the Small Pox

Her Epitaph

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

from The Life of Richard Savage, Son of the Earl of Rivers (1744)

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)

from The Rambler (1750-52)

Number 2 Saturday, 24 March 1750

from the Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759)

from the Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765)

from Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1781)

from Milton

John Armstrong MD (1709-1779)

from The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem (1744)

Mary Collier (fl. 1740-1760)

The Woman's Labour: An Epistle to Mr. Stephen Duck; in Answer to his late Poem, called The Threshers Labour . . . By Mary Collier, Now a Washer-Woman, at Petersfield in Hampshire (1739)

Jane Collier (d. 1755)

from An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting; with Proper Rules for the Exercise of that Pleasant Art (1753)

Madam Johnson

from Madam Johnsons Present: Or, the best Instructions For Young Women, In Useful and Universal Knowledge. With A Summary of the late Marriage Act, and Instructions how to marry pursuant thereto (1754)

David Hume (1711-1776)

from Essays Moral and Political (1742)

Of the Liberty of the Press

from Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1777)

My Own Life

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

Letter to Richard West Florence, 21 April 1741

Sonnet [on the Death of Mr. Richard West] (1742)

Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat (1748)

An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard (1751)

The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode (1768)

Horace Walpole (1717-1797)

Letter to Richard West, Florence, 4 December 1740

Letter to Hannah More, Strawberry Hill, 4 November 1789

Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806)

On the Death of Mrs. Rowe (1739)

Ode to Melancholy (1739)

To Miss Lynch (1744)

To ------ (1753)

On the Indulgence of Fancy (1770)

William Collins (1721-59)

from Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1747)

Ode to Fear

Ode on the Poetical Character

from A Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748)

Ode to Evening

Catherine Talbot (1721-1770)

from The Rambler

Number 30 Saturday, 30 June 1750

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)

from Travels through France and Italy (1766)

Christopher Smart (1722-1771)

from Jubilate Agno (c. 1758-63)

from Fragment A

from Fragment B

Mary Leapor (1722-1746)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1748)

The Month of August

An Epistle to a Lady

Mira's Will

from Poems on Several Occasions (1751)

An Essay on Woman

Crumble-Hall

Man the Monarch

Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)

from Discourse 14

Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of the Prizes, 10 December 1788

[The Ironical Discourse] (1791)

Sir Joshuas Preface

The Discourse

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the the Sublime and the Beautiful (1759)

Part 2, Section 1 Of the Passion caused by the Sublime

Section 2 Terror

Section 3 Obscurity

Section 4 Of the difference between Clearness and Obscurity with regard to the passions

Section [5] The same subject continued

Section 13 Beautiful objects small

Section 14 Smoothness

Section 15 Gradual Variation

Section 16 Delicacy

from Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event (1790)

Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774)

The Revolution in Low Life (1762)

The Deserted Village, A Poem (1770)

William Cowper (1731-1800)

On a Goldfinch Starved to Death in his Cage (1782)

Epitaph on a Hare (1784)

To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut on which I Dined this Day (1784)

The Negro's Complaint (1789)

On a Spaniel Called Beau Killing a Young Bird (1793)

Beau's Reply

On the Ice Islands Seen floating in the German Ocean (1799)

The Castaway (1799)

James Macpherson (1736-1796)

from Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language (1762)

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781)

from Volume II Chapter 23

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

from Common Sense (1776)

from The American Crisis (1777)

from The Rights of Man: being an Answer to Mr. Burkes Attack on the French Revolution (1791)

James Boswell (1740-1795)

from The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, LL D (1791)

Hesther Lynch Thrale Piozzi (1741-1821)

from Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson LL D during the Last Twenty Years of his Life (1786)

from Correspondence with Samuel Johnson (1773-5)

Anna Laetitia Aiken Barbauld (1743-1825)

from Poems (1792)

The Mouse's Petition

Verses Written in an Alcove

from the Monthly Magazine (1797)

Washing-Day

Olaudah Equiano (1745-?-=1797)

from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vasa, the African (1789)

Henry MacKenzie (1745-1831)

from The Man of Feeling (1771)

Hannah More (1745-1833)

from Sensibility (1782)

from The Slave Trade (1790)

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)

from Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems (1784; revised 1800)

To Hope

To Friendship

The Laplander

Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening

Mary Scott (fl. 1774-1788)

from The Female Advocate: A Poem Occasioned by Reading Mr. Duncombe's Feminead (1774)

Frances Burney (later D'Arblay) (1752-1840)

from Journals and Letters

27-8 March 1777

22 March 1812

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)

from Poems, Supposed to have been Written at Bristol, By Thomas Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777)

An Excelente Balade of Charitie

George Crabbe (1754-1832)

from The Village: A Poem in Two Books (1783)

Ann Cromartie Yearsley (1756-1806)

from Poems on Several Occasions (1785)

On Mrs. Montagu

from Poems on Various Subjects (1787)

To Indifference

To those who accuse the Author of Ingratitude

William Blake (1757-1827)

from Songs of Innocence (1789)

Introduction

The Lamb

The Little Black Boy

The Chimney Sweeper

Holy Thursday

Infant Joy

from Songs of Experience (1794)